Moe Lane

More accurately, there seems to be a hole in my Delta Green collection.  Delta Green is, of course, the modern government conspiracy/investigation setting for the Call of Cthulhu RPG; and it has an internal narrative in its back-story.  I bring this up because I have just picked up the latest book (Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly: book-book, not gaming supplement-book), and it’s clear that there is a gap in the narrative: apparently, some stuff went down when I wasn’t looking.  I think that I must have not bought a particular book or something, but I can’t figure out which one.  Minor mystery, but slightly aggravating.

Here’s what I do have:

• Delta Green
• Delta Green: Countdown (…FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-TWO DOLLARS?)
• Delta Green: Eyes Only
• Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity
• Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement (fiction)
• Delta Green: Dark Theatres (fiction)
• Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy (fiction)
• Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly (fiction)

There’s a couple of short stories on The Unspeakable Oath site and all that, but I don’t think that they’re the missing links.  What am I missing?

I’m a little surprised at myself that I haven’t mentioned this webcomic before: after all, The Watcher of Yathagggu is Cthulhu Mythos/steampunk* (and quite unsettling), and everybody knows how I feel about those two different genres.  This one’s also sorta-kinda post-apocalypse, in that special Mythos way.  All in all, it very favorably compares with Lovecraft is Missing, which is finally updating again, by the way.

Anyway, the current chapter to TWoY starts here, but there’s a decent-sized, tasty backlog to it. Go check it out.

Moe Lane

*Although it may be more electro-punk by now.

It’s the latest Delta Green* novel, which got funded via Kickstarter.  The electronic version is supposedly going out today to backers, with the hardcopy being available in about a week or so: I totally missed this one, so I ain’t getting either until they make either available to regular buyers.  Can’t wait: I rarely buy book tie-ins, but my appetite for Mythos stuff is nigh-insatiable.

Above a certain level of quality, of course.  Some of you probably know what I mean already, and the rest of you are fortunate not to.

Moe Lane

PS: Ken Hite’s Cthulhu 101 came in the mail last week.  Damned funny and damned useful: there’s stuff in there that I missed.

PPS: “Philosophy,” a DG story, via The Unspeakable Oath.

*For those unfamiliar with the game: Call of Cthulhu meets secret government anti-Mythos conspiracy.  Made out of Crystalline Awesome with tightly-woven WIN inserts.

[UPDATE: Great. This didn't load when it was supposed to. Lemme go see what else hasn't gone properly this evening on the site.]

I have been waiting for Cliffourd the Big Red God (Mini Mythos) for months.

Months. So, it makes both the Book of the week and the wish list.

Hey, you read me… so if I’m weird, what does that make you?

Now let us pause for a moment in respect while The Year at Maple Hill Farm flees to the safety of a new Dark Age.

Cthulhu Mythos short fan film; it’s a couple of years old, but interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI0M4xRwbs8&feature=player_embedded

More here; first referenced here. I’m afraid that I have to agree with the implicit message found in the second link, though: adapting Lovecraft to the cinema is hard.

(Via Nodwick) And it will not be a light romantic comedy set in modern Nebraska.  Do you think that I jest?  Go look at what they did to Exit To Eden if you want to see what Hollywood can do to a book.  Not going to be a problem here:

The main issues that financiers have had is that del Toro needed his movie to be a period film, and he needed it to be R-rated. Movies like that are really hard to market, and so studios, such as Universal in this case, haven’t wanted to pay for it.

[snip]

So why would Universal decide that they were finally ready to take the risk? One name: James Cameron. According to the reports, the Avatar director has decided to back del Toro’s vision and come on as a producer. Not only that, but the movie will be in 3D, and there’s no one else on the planet right now that you want in your corner when it comes to 3D more than James Cameron. They even plan to start pre-production immediately with hopes of filming some time next summer.

Cameron’s a bit of a… wonderful person who is going to help put one of Lovecraft’s most epic vistas on the screen… but he knows how to do big, and big is what you need when you’re doing a horror/adventure story about a lost, pre-human Antarctic city.  There’s been a real dearth of big-screen Mythos movies that have been mainstream successes – I count three, in fact, and none of them are officially Lovecraft films* – so I’m kind of hoping that this one takes off.

Moe Lane (more…)

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.  Disinformation, smishinformation.  It’s all about the crass commercialism of the Amazon.com link.

“Aliens on the sea floor.”  Pshaw, Glenn.  Clearly the ‘oil slick’ is part and parcel of the ongoing civil war between the Innsmouthite traditionalist and the Strossian reformer factions of the Deep Ones, and we’re just trying to keep it hushed up, lest we see a resurgence of breakaway Antarctic Space Elder Race terrorism again.  It was bad enough the last time that they were actively attempting to use our seaborne neighbors’ internal political conflicts to get their own back; the fallout (literally) from dealing with the Neu Schwabenland redoubt was bad enough, but Elder Race shenanigans breed South American fascists like a Innsmouthite breeds shoggoths – and that means that weak-minded artists will become prey for the Great Old Ones.  The human race simply cannot handle another assault on its sanity like Evita.

It simply cannot.

Moe Lane

There would be, in fact, a market for a Cthulhu-themed animated program. I think that it was Gahan Wilson that suggested “Cthulhu Kiddies?”

…What? You’ve seen some of my Books of the Week, haven’t you?

As my wife emailed me to note, they’re perfect compliments to Tiberius cologne: perfumes inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos.

SHOGGOTH
It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congerie of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.

An amorphous, radiant, incandescent scent. Ever changing, protoplasmic and primordial: white amber, green coconut meat, iris, palmarosa, Chinese peony, lime, water lily, snowdrop, muguet, lemongrass, osmanthus, wisteria, glassy musk, and hinoki.

Provided that ‘perfect’ includes ‘geeky.’

As you may remember, I had a choice between two Cthulhu indy films, and based on reader input I went with The Call of Cthulhu: The Celebrated Story by H.P. Lovecraft. It came in the mail Saturday; I got my mail today; and I have just now watched it.

I suspect that I had ended up choosing… wisely. It’s clever in its format; it works well as a silent, black-and-white short movie – better than it would as a bloated SF extravaganza. The music was well chosen, the plot is surprisingly close to the original, and while it did not scare the devil out of me it would have been hard to, seeing as I know the story so well by now. I do wonder how an impressionable nine year old would approach this movie. Or possibly a twelve year old.

The HPLHS website is here – and, spookily, they have just now decided to explain to the world what the heck is going on with their new project. Well, old project.

Something to look forward to.

Hey, Firefox’s spellchecker recognizes ‘squamous.’ They clearly know their target audience.

Anyway, I noticed Musica Cthuliana mostly because they follow me on Twitter – I can’t imagine why – and I finally got around to listening to their stuff. They’re marketing it for people needing horror roleplaying game background music, and they’ve hit it; I might not pick it for Delta Green – at least, not all the time – but it’ll do nicely for your regular Call of Cthulhu, and maybe even some of your darker* White Wolf World of Darkness games.

Anyway, I like what I’m hearing so far.  Check out the free stuff; they’re planning to have a new CD out soon. Presumably they’re also working out how to separate American buyers from their cash at the same time.

*Yes, it can always get darker.

This thought is not mine, but Ken Hite’s. It’s part of his bloody marvelous Tour de Lovecraft, which should be on everybody’s short list of horror-genre analysis books to buy, but the relevant bit is here:

Hence, you can watch Pleasantville as a photographic negative of “The Colour Out of Space.” As the color which nobody in the world has ever seen before spreads, their society is destroyed. We have met the Colour, and it is us.

No, think about it for a second.  Consider Pleasantville as a horror film:

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